 |
|
Hollow Knight: Silksong (PC) by dkirschner (May 13th, 2026 at 14:58:07) |
Kicking myself for not writing an entry when I was playing this 6 months ago. I am cleaning up my wishlist, backlog, and etc., and the FEELING I get when I see Silksong "in progress" is anxiety. I had jotted a few notes in December, as follows:
"It’s true, Silksong is hard. Like, really, frustratingly hard. Like punishingly difficult. I hit a wall at the end of Act 1 trying to beat the Last Judge. The game likes to place benches far away from boss fights, such that retrying boss fights involves slogging back through tough platforming and other sections of the map."
I did kill the Last Judge and complete Act 1. I remember that took a very long time, and that after the Last Judge, I died a few more times and, probably, with shaking hands and rapid heartbeat, said, "I can't do this anymore." Actually, it may have been in one of those rooms with waves of enemies. This innovation is new and unwelcome to Silksong, rooms that lock upon entering and spill several waves of challenging enemies at you. Yeah, I think that is what got me, just being pummeled over and over in one of those rooms, getting tired of exploring the maze-like map, tired of dying, tired of corpse runs, just exhausted. The game became a chore.
Besides that, I loved it, haha. I was definitely into it for a while. It was sublime until it wasn't.
read all entries for this GameLog 
- add a comment 
|
|
Turnip Boy Robs a Bank (PC) by dkirschner (May 12th, 2026 at 17:20:35) |
I meant to quickly beat this back in April so I could have a "completion" for the month, but I got really busy after spending barely an hour one afternoon with Turnip Boy Robs a Bank, a bizarre little twin-stick shooter about a turnip...who robs a bank. The game builds off previous games in the series, which I have never played, in which Turnip Boy commits tax evasion and, according to this game at least, seems to have started a war. Work has slowed down for the first time in nearly two months, and while I wait for my next contract to begin, I figured I'd knock this out.
The whole game is silly. The world is populated by sentient fruits and vegetables. You are employed by a pickle / mafia gang leader to rob a bank of a garlic bulb / bad guy / killed your dad. You have a base, where you can get new weapon loadouts by bringing weapons from the bank (always try to return with something new or high-powered!), purchase progression items from the "dark web," and upgrade stuff at another vendor. You go on "runs" to the bank, which are timed (starts at 2 or 3 minutes, goes up to 5 or 6 with upgrades). Runs are over when you die or when you exit the bank. Die and you lose half the cash you accumulated in the run. Survive and you are handsomely rewarded. Upgrade stuff. Go back to the bank. It's a roguelite too.
The bank has a specific layout of rooms, but you'll encounter some randomized areas too, and enemies and treasure are somewhat randomized. Throughout the bank are tons of NPCs with little fetch quests that usually reward you with pictures (fun/ny to look at) or hats (fun/ny to equip). A blueberry might want you to find its wedding ring, a lime wants you to get divorce papers from her lemon husband, a scientist pineapple wants you to find a philosopher mango and ask it an ethical question about experimenting on fruits, etc. I had some good laughs.
In each corner of the bank is a boss. Boss fights were fun, but the most challenging were early on. Once you start upgrading stats, the game becomes easy. It definitely ends up being an "upgrade everything and go nuts on all the enemies!" type game, experience being overpowered.
I haven't played a twin-stick shooter in a while, and while this wasn't revolutionary or anything, it was fun and scratched the itch. I gotta get back to Divinity: Original Sin 2. I might have some extra time till my next gig, so maybe I can boot it up, remember what I was doing, and make some progress this week.
read all entries for this GameLog
- add a comment
|
|
Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow (DS) by jp (Apr 27th, 2026 at 22:04:52) |
I got to that point where I hit a monster/boss that just wasn't that much fun, and then I got a bit lost in terms of where to continue making progress, and the backtracking started to get a bit tiresome...as I explored and searched for different paths. So, time to bail!
read all entries for this GameLog
- add a comment
|
|
Legacy of Ys Books I & II (DS) by jp (Apr 27th, 2026 at 22:03:27) |
Can you believe that I capped out on character level? I hit level 24, with plenty of game to go (I checked a guide, though I had reached the last 20% or so) and that's it. No more levels. It was a bit of a disappointment to be honest, and I also started to tire of having to backtrack all over the place to talk to different characters and so on. It was fun, and surprising to me in many ways, it's an action RPG with real-time combat, but no real challenge or interest in the combat - limited items and gear, no significant shopping or upgrading...there's boss fights (which are much harder than the regular game), but there wasn't much there to continue to keep my interest. So, I've decided to bail.
I did also spend some time on the Wikipedia page and it looks like the game has been re-released a million times across different formats, and rebundled with new content, and stuff touched up and more. I'm kind of surprised because I wasn't all that impressed to be fair. As in, the game was fun and I enjoyed it for a bit, but I'm not entirely sure that it merits THAT much attention in the re-releases? Maybe I'm missing something and this game really resonated strongly with lots of people?
read all entries for this GameLog
- add a comment
|
|
Legacy of Ys Books I & II (DS) by jp (Apr 26th, 2026 at 10:06:39) |
I need to look up more info on this. I had assumed it was a bundle of the two first Ys games, but upon starting the first one (Book I), the 3D graphics make it seem like it's a newer game? So I'm really curious what the backstory here is...
It started out pretty frustrating - because I wandered into a field outside of town and died immediately. I had to start over which was a drag - lots of text to skip past, and died again! Sigh. I eventually figured out how to save your game, which helped. So, I decided to then book it, dodge enemies and made it to a city! Here I bought a sword and some armor...and figured I wouldn't die again immediately but I did! It turns out I hadn't figured out how to equip the items and that solved EVERYTHING.
I've been playing since, and the game's quite interesting in its camera perspective - it's a very unusual sort of 3D isometric view, but it's not at an angle, but rather it's sort of straight? (like vertical/top to bottom). It's a weird perspective because there's lots that gets occluded (if you walk down towards a wall, the wall blocks you from seeing what's close to it when you come from the top part of the scree). I mean, it makes sense spatially, but it's a weird perspective in a game - you also cannot rotate the camera AFAIK.
read all entries for this GameLog
- add a comment
|
|
|
|
|
GameLog hopes to be a site where gamers such as yourself keep track of the games that
they are currently playing. A GameLog is basically a record of a game you started playing. If it's open,
you still consider yourself to be playing the game. If it's closed, you finished playing the game. (it doesn't matter
if you got bored, frustrated,etc.) You can also attach short comments to each of your games or even maintain a diary (with more detailed entries)
for that game. Call it a weblog of game playing activity if you will.
[latest site fixes and updates]
[read more]
|
view feed xml
|
 |
|
2323 registered gamers and 3357 games. 7894 GameLogs with 13388 journal entries. 5125 games are currently being played.
More stats
|
 |
|
Hotel Dusk: Room 215 (DS) by dumpster_fox |
| The pacing makes this otherwise good game simply intolerable. Great art, great writing, great characters, but actually getting to this content takes absolutely forever. |
|
most recent entry: Monday 14 January, 2008
|
GAMEPLAY
Hotel Dusk has failed to pick up. The game continues its molasses-like pace and shows absolutely no signs of nearing any event that would cause any sort of acceleration in the gameplay whatsoever. It has not improved in any way since the previous entry, and in fact has revealed strange new bits of gameplay that have in fact lowered my opinion of the game.
Hotel Dusk has continued in its habit of not teaching the player how to do things. Basic interface tasks, such as giving items to characters, making a person turn around, and using one item on another, are presented to the player and it is just assumed that they know what the designers intended them to do. For the most part it is relatively simple to figure out (assuming you are used to conventional game mechanics), but it can often get to the point of obscurity where you deduce the solution simply by scrawling randomly all over with the stylus.
The game is also frequently unclear as to what your objectives are or what you need to do to advance the plot. Probably the most annoying example of this was when I was put in the ridiculous situation of systematically knocking on every door in an attempt to find someone to engage in conversation so that I could go back to my room and have a package arrive. There is no indication whatsoever that the player needs to talk with the character before the package can arrive, and even less indication that the person is even able to be talked to. Situations like these make the game nigh unplayable.
Another odd gameplay portion appeared that managed to confuse and even insult me a bit. Apparently, at the end of every chapter, you are quizzed on the basic details of what occurred during said chapter. Do they assume that I am not paying attention? This portion was completely unexpected and really threw me off-kilter.
Finally, and perhaps above all else, the speed of this game and its plot is absolutely glacial. The player is tasked with the most menial of tasks that take positively forever to actually accomplish. The player arrives at the hotel at 5:00PM in the game, and at least three hours in, I have only managed to advance the in-game clock by forty minutes. The game is, in a single word, catatonic.
DESIGN
This game is SLOW. Normally in stories you have high points and low points, and this generally carries over to games as well. The changes in the pacing is important, as if it is always high-tension the player gets fatigued, and if it is always low-tension (as in this case) the player tends to get bored. The three hours of gameplay I experienced could be used as an example of how not to pace games and stories in general.
The art direction of the game, on the other hand, is absolutely fantastic. Everything has a sketch-y quality to it, with the characters literally being roughly animated sketches, and the environment fading out to a blank canvas in areas of no importance (the blank stretch of wall between a sitting area and a door, for example). The environment that is detailed maintains a hand-illustrated feel, with a painted feel to the areas with color. The art is one of my favorite parts of the game, and feels creative and fresh. Likewise, the characters are developed to a degree that is uncommon in games, and the conflicts that arise with them, as well as their responses, feel natural and believable. These two things are perhaps the only thing keeping me playing at this time, as the gameplay and plot certainly fail to provide incentive for continuing.
The game is largely based around conversation with characters, with the player doing a lot of passive dialogue absorption. Every so often you are allowed the honor of tapping a blinking button on the screen to "follow up" on something, which simply results in more text to read. You are also given the option to ask certain people about certain things, which while interesting from a character perspective is not particularly engaging nor fun. Very rarely do the choices of things to ask about hit on any really interesting or difficult choices, but every so often you have to give pause to honestly think about it.
Being on the DS, the game offers some interesting features as far as gameplay goes. The occasional puzzle requires you to interact directly with objects, moving things around and grabbing certain places. The DS also presents problems, however, as moving around in first-person is accomplished by moving a cursor around on an overhead map, which requires you to focus on that instead of the actual first-person view. There are also load times between menus, rooms, and views that are encountered often enough to significantly contribute to the slow pace of the game.
All in all, Hotel Dusk: Room 215 is a game with great writing and art direction that is made nigh-unplayable by the pacing, lack of proper instruction for the player, and lack of gameplay-based incentive for continuation of play.
[read this GameLog]
|
|
|
